FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
June 13, 2000
Contact: Melissa Wyers
(202) 347-3507
Nearly seven million people in 24 countries fled from their homes to escape wars, social violence, government repression, and other forms of persecution last year, a report released today by the U.S. Committee for Refugees (USCR) states.
Some newly uprooted persons were able to return home within a short time, but millions remain refugees or internally displaced within their own countries, joining tens of millions still uprooted from previous years.
The number of refugees worldwide climbed by 600,000 last year - the first significant refugee increase in seven years. An even more dramatic jump occurred in the number of internally displaced persons - an increase of 4 million in a single year.
The findings are contained in the World Refugee Survey 2000, an assessment of refugee and internal displacement emergencies around the world compiled annually by USCR. This year's 328-page study contains reports on refugee, displacement, and asylum situations in 126 countries.
"The end of the 20th Century has not brought an end to the bloodshed and persecution that force people to run for their lives," said Bill Frelick, USCR policy director. "Tens of millions of people have ushered in the new millennium in refugee camps and at other temporary shelters, afraid that they will be killed if they dare to return to their homes."
According to the World Refugee Survey 2000:
More than 35 million people worldwide are uprooted from their homes - an increase of 5 million in the past year. More than 14 million people are refugees outside their home countries. Some 21 million others are displaced within their own country - percent more than the year before.
Violence forced nearly 7 million people to flee their homes during 1999. The flight of 1 million persons from war and ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, the displacement of three-quarters of a million people in East Timor, and the displacement of a half-million people in Chechnya received the most international attention. Less noticed were crises last year that produced 800,000 newly uprooted people in Congo-Brazzaville, 500,000 in Angola, 400,000 in both Congo-Kinshasa and Burundi, 350,000 in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and Eritrea, and more than 1 million new refugees and internally displaced persons in more than a dozen other countries.
Populations are uprooted from 60 countries worldwide. The African country of Sudan accounts for one of every nine of the world's uprooted people. Three countries-Sudan, Afghanistan, and Angola-have produced more than one-fourth of the world's entire uprooted population. Forty-four countries and territories are each the source of 100,000 or more uprooted people.
Ninety-six of the world's 191 countries - more than half - are directly linked to uprooted populations. These 96 countries either have produced significant numbers of refugees or internally displaced persons, or are hosting significant numbers of refugees from other countries.
More people were uprooted at the end of the 1990s than when the decade began. Some 35 million people remained uprooted as the decade ended, compared to fewer than 29 million when the decade began. The causes of massive population displacement became more pervasive during the 1990s: Countries and territories producing a half-million or more uprooted people increased during the decade from 13 to 25.
"These are grim numbers," Frelick said. "It is sobering to realize that millions of people on this earth, particularly refugees and displaced persons in Africa, have begun the new millennium living in conditions that are in some ways similar to those that existed a full millennium earlier: in huts or exposed to the elements, without adequate clothing, sanitation, or health care, preyed upon by their fellow men, and effectively unprotected by rule of law."
The U.S. Committee for Refugees is a private, nonprofit, humanitarian organization that works for the protection and assistance of uprooted people around the world.